While fast, efficient communications are vital for advanced industrialeconomies and societies, the United States is poised to enterthe 21st century with a postal monopoly established in the 18th.
The federal government maintains a monopoly on the transportand delivery of messages on pieces of paper or other material media.It is a federal crime for private suppliers to offer these services. Yetproblems with the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) are chronic. Moreand more, the defects of the Postal Service stand in contrast to thesuccesses of the private sector-created telecommunications revolution.Critics compare e-mail with what they call the Postal Service'ssnail mail. The situation suggests that the days of the Postal Serviceas a government monopoly may and certainly should be numbered.